Cultural Agencies: 'Constructing' Community Subjects and Their Rights

Abstract

Communities and their generated cultural properties are continually evolving. Intellectual property laws play a constitutive role in that evolution. While states and NGOs can potentially steer communities and their properties towards their own objectives, these newly ‘capacitated’ communities are more politically active in demanding state concessions and legal autonomy. Rather than merely being drawn into regimes of market citizenship for the purposes of capital accumulation, these communities are utilizing intellectual property rights in their appeals to normative discourses of indigenous and human rights in advancing transnational social justice movements.

Keywords: Culture, Community rights, Intellectual property, Indigenous rights, Human rights